When you Pray, Pray for Repentance When you pray, make the central theme of your prayer a request that God bring you to true repentance. Repentance must be the goal of your prayer life, for only in repentance can you gain humility. God’s grace will sustain you through any trial
Category: The Morning Offering
The Priest and the American Tourist A protestant woman from Tacoma, WA. was on vacation with her husband in the Greek city of Athens. Each day she walked to a small sidewalk cafe near the hotel for her coffee and watched the locals pass by. One of these locals was
The Common Men Called by the Lord As we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, it is good to remember that the Lord did not call academics, religious leaders, or important members of the King’s Court, as His Apostles, but rather He called what were essentially
The Spiritually Rich Man Needs Nothing More The spiritually rich man is someone who is happy with what he has and doesn’t need anything more. The spiritually poor man is one who has everything but it is never happy. The spiritually rich man is one who is always satisfied with
Spiritual Pain Control or Spiritual Healing? Since the Church is a hospital for the soul wherein we come for healing, it is important that we take full advantage of all the resources the Church offers us for such healing. Frequent confession, where we bare our sins before God with the
Counteracting the Dark Side of the Internet I often google topics that interest me, finding information that would have required hours in the library in the past. I’ve visited Russian monasteries, watched videos of chanters in Greek monasteries, viewed Orthodox patriarchs serving the Divine Liturgy, all on the Internet. I’ve
Proper Preparation for Receiving the Holy Mysteries The Russian Orthodox Church requires anyone who desires to receive Holy Communion prepare themselves with confession, the Precommunion Prayers and to abstain from food or drink from midnight on. Most of the world’s Local Orthodox Churches hold to this standard, recognizing that the
MURDERED Pope Tawadros Egypt: Muslims murder Coptic priest Coptic Pope Tawadros, spiritual leader of Egypt’s 12 million Christians, giving his blessing to the removal of Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, and His Holiness’s having attended the announcement by armed forces commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi suspending the constitution, sectarian violence erupted
How to Kill the Ego In our self-centered age we have come to believe we must feel good about ourselves and have rejected the idea of guilt and sin. Sin is seen as religion’s outdated instrument for keeping people in line, making them dependent on an institution that should be
How your Soul Differs from that of an Animal The Orthodox Church teaches that animals have souls, although not the same as ours. When conceived, God bestows upon us the nous, which distinguishes us from the other animals. It is the nous that is the eye of the soul, intelligent